Such winding machines with support cylinders serve for the axleless winding of longitudinally sectioned webs of material, particularly paper or cardboard onto cores, whereby the winding rolls are positioned in alignment on the support cylinders during winding. Different from the so-called axle winding, wherein a set of winding rolls is held during winding by means of an axle passing through all cores, in the axleless winding two guide heads are introduced from outside into the cores of the outer winding rolls.
With the winding machines with support cylinders known from DE-A 36 18 955, winding rolls with the required winding quality can be produced only up to a certain diameter. The reason for that is that the winding hardness of the roll is influenced by the line load (=contact weight per width of a winding roll) at the two contact lines of the winding roll on the support cylinders.
The winding hardness should be as even as possible for the entire set of winding rolls and over the diameter of each individual winding roll and to have a predetermined value, which is exceeded in the case of the known winding machines with support cylinders from a certain diameter up, due to the increasing contact weight, thereby limiting the maximum diameter of the winding rolls.
In order to relieve the dead load in winding machines with support cylinders with axle winding it is known from German Patent 11 11 496 to create overpressure in the space defined between the support cylinders and the winding roll. For the lateral sealing of this hollow space serve cover plates fitted to the shape of the support cylinders, which plates can be displaced in order to be placed against the frontal side of the winding rolls. The sealing of the bottom portion is done by a cylinder or group of cylinders arranged tangentially with respect to the two support cylinders.
The sealing elements described in German Patent 11 11 496 are not suited for use in winding machine with support cylinders based on axleless winding, since their fastening elements are located within the motion range of the guide heads. Furthermore, a frictional engagement is created between the two support cylinders due to the sealing cylinder pressing thereagainst, which precludes the setting of variable rolling momentums for the purpose of influencing the quality of the winding process.